A review by emtay
Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir by Dolly Alderton

funny inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.5

A powerful attestation to finding oneself and recognizing love in all its iterations. Most young women with a college degree and a playfully limited suburban, middle-class background will recognize themselves and their compatriots in its pages. Perhaps because of my age or my current situation, I found myself trying to distance myself at every turn from Dolly and her tendencies, to point to every subtle difference between us as evidence that her conclusions do not apply to me. However, at the same time, this desire implies recognition. For the devils inside, my insecurities, my difficulties in experiencing life, the fissures in my sense of self, and the brokenness in my past. Yet, I find myself comforted by my present experience of sorority amongst my friends, the unabashed love we feel and express, and I am proud that I live everyday in full appreciation and comfort of its warm glow. I am glad that it did not take me to 30 to see that. That at 23 I have crystallized that the love I feel for my friends is true, massive, important. Constant. 

Thankful I don’t drink. Thankful I don’t do drugs. Thankful I cry at sunsets. Thankful I dance on my roof in the rain. Thankful I sleep in Anty’s bed and thankful I sleep in F’s. Thankful I speak to museum docents and thankful I cook meals for and with my roommates. Thankful I experience the idea of my friends as drunk rose laughter and tangled limbs. May we laugh long. May we believe that each day is a step. May we believe that we are enough not because of what we have, what we do, or what we look like; but because we are- and we have each other to prove it. 

I removed the knife from Z’s hands and threw everything sharp unceremoniously down the garbage shoot. Sab in the hospital in anaphylactic shock then going out to McDonald’s for McFlurry’s at 2 am. Sarah using me as a punching bag while being abused by her college boyfriend. Anty kissing me to see if her chapstick actually tasted like chapstick (it did not). Livi falling out of the car door as I turned onto the 10-W so we could go to a sex shop on a Tuesday night, loaded up in my Tacoma like we were setting out on a road trip to our futures. 

Hard to read at times. We all want to understand our lives. To believe we are in control. To believe that we aren’t hurting. This book exposes the subtleties of growing up and how at no stage is there any “knowing”. How suitable that it’s in the title.

It may seem life is difficult at times but it’s really as simple as breathing in and out... Rip open hearts with your fury and tear down egos with your modesty. Be the person you wish you could be, not the person you feel you are doomed to be. Let yourself run away with your feelings. You were made so that someone could love you. Let them love you (“Florence”) 
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